The picture above shows just a little of the garbage left over at the end of Queensday last year. Held on the 30th of April, the birthday of our previous queen, Queensday is one of our most important holidays, in which we can indulge in our traditional vices of drink and commerce. It’s a day when, as one wag described it, one half of the Dutch population is selling the contents of their attics to the other half and the city in which the most of this is done is Amsterdam, party central on Queensday. It all makes for quite a lot of mess.
And this year the garbage collectors are threatening to strike. Not just on the day, but the entire week from Queensday, which also includes a potential Ajax championship celebration as well as Rememembrance Day on May 4th and Liberation Day on May 5th. It’s perhaps the worst period in the year to have this strike, hence a good way for the unions to pressure the city.
For the garbage collectors are not just striking for themselves, but for all municipal civil servants. The demands are modest — basically wanting to keep salary levels matching inflation — but the Dutch city councils have refused so far to meet them. My sympathies therefore are with the garbage collectors and I’ll make sure to keep my own (modest) garbage safe until the end of the strike…